Oldboy 2013

Let me start off by saying that, when I first found out that Spike Lee would be directing the American remake, I was over the moon. He seemed like one of the few American directors who could do the film justice. Keep the soul, the suffering and the heart of the tale intact. I felt that it was a blessing that the undoubtedly neutered, Spielberg and Smith remake would never see the light of day. Boy was I fucking wrong. The movie reeks of unnecessary American remake syndrome, no soul, no heart. Like a teenage boy it puts the little head, before the big head.

Before we get into the bad stuff, let us get the few good bits out of the way. The performances are really the only good bits. Josh Brolin gives a rock solid performance. No, it doesn’t come close to rivalling Min-sik Choi, but with a better script, Brolin might have. He carries the pain and confusion as if it were a rock left upon his back. Sharto Copley and Sam Jackson both had loads of fun with their respective roles by the looks of it. Their screen presence is undeniable as they chew through each scene with glee. If anything, this film once more proves that being a villain is far more fun than being the hero. This is where the positives end and the shit sandwich begins.

The film  itself follows the plot of the original almost scene for scene, only diverging at the end and a few little things here and there, so if you’ve seen the original there really is no need to watch this remake.  Actually, some of the changes that are actually made only serve to damage the film. Take Joe’s friend Chucky, in the original the character owns an internet café. This is how Joe was introduced to computers and the internet. In the remake Chucky, owns a bar. Apparently every American badass is only allowed to have bartenders/owners as friends.

I said that the performances are the only good bits, I really should’ve said they are good in spite of the script. You must give the actors credit for overcoming the grand over simplifications imposed on them Protosevich. He peels away all the layers of each and every character, until only one core feature is left per character. Combine them all and maybe you will have a fully fleshed out character. Well that or Voltron, who knows.

The villain is stripped of all complexity and depth. He is no longer a broken man who can balance his desire for vengeance with keeping up appearances. No, now he is an offensive gay stereotype. In the original his vengeance wasn’t imposed by meaningless violence, it was calculated to a perverse sense of justice that could let him have a modicum of peace. In the remake, this complexity is thrown out the window, he is made into a one dimensional stereotype. They take a broken man, who lives in a sort of moral grey space and turn him into sadomasochistic gay stereotype. Lee and co., take no time to establish his frame of reference as was done in the original. In the original, his point of view is essential to establishing his mentality, but it is not present in the film. The POV explains his mentality, it gives us the flip side of the coin to the protagonist. It turns them both into monsters and messed up avenging angels. How could the man who has made so many classics let that tanker sized detail slip through the cracks? It is downright offensive.

Then we have Joe. Like Copley’s villain, in the original, Joe’s character is a complex character that exists in a moral grey. In the 2003 version, the violence aimed for a stylized realism. The violence perpetrated by Joe was part of his characterisation; it told us tons of detail about his pain and desires without ever spilling it out in a vomit of words. In the remake, the over-choregraphed violence, strips that away from Joe. There is the scene where Joe beats up and possibly kills several jocks in broad daylight. In the original, Oh Dae Su is not the aggressor, he does his best to end the fight as quickly and efficiently as possible. Joe is not a broken man trying to find meaning, he is an 80’s action star in a serious drama and that my friends, fails on every fucking level possible. In the remake, they try to make it all style and all flash, Joe is the vigilante aggressor in an over stylized fight. Instead of efficiently moving past the obstacle to go continue to his goal, he stops and fights. He kills not out of necessity, but rather in service of fulfilling the assumed blood lust of the audience. Yes that can be cool too watch, but not if that’s not what your film is about. Like sex in violence must have contextual reason in any film, otherwise it is a distraction. It should fit logically and meaningfully. Here it is jarring for all the wrong reasons. It betrays the film itself by depicting brutality as stylish rather than cringe-worthy. This leads us to the hallway fight.

Yes they kept it in the film and boy did they butcher the fight. Where the original fight was a brutal marathon of endurance, shot with a low key and grimy style, this new fight exemplifies everything wrong with the remake. Everyone involved struggles to make the fight even cooler than the original and in the process, misses why the original was so cool. Lee’s fight is all about style and flash, it’s about having Joe make cool looking kills and fancy blows, but they’re all fluff. The stylishness draws attention to the fact that the scene is over-choreographed. In the original, you would cringe with the blows, because you could see the restraint, the fear, the exhaustion in each of the participants faces. The attacks have an air of disunity to them. Every blow, block and stab left its mark on the viewer. In the original, the fight showed that Joe is a brawler, not a trained fighter. This was done to establish that even though he could fight goons, Joe could not stand up to trained professionals. By stripping this brutality from the remake they serve to create confusion when Joe does finally confront a trained fighter. Fuck you Lee and Protosevich for shitting on one of the best fight sequences ever filmed.

The costume and art design is yet another tumble down a cliff. It’s as if the costume designer thought that the outrageous outfits from superhero comic books would actually look good on screen. They dress up Sam Jackson as some sort of pimp who’s a bit to obsessed with Sin City. The man chews up every scene he is given, but I’m sure he was left famished as he hunted for a role that was a far more filling then the scraps of this train wreck.

This only scratches the surface of what’s wrong with the film:

-the scene with Joe on a bicycle belongs in a comedy

-the showdown at the bar with the scraggly looking goons who look like mercenary hobos

-the American desire for a thong wearing sex puppet assistant who’s more furniture than person

-every time Copley plays with his fingers

-why the fuck is it that only two characters have aged over the course of 20 years?

The ending, like everything else in this film, it tries to outdo the original in the ickiness factor. In some ways it does, but unlike in the original where the revelations are heartbreaking, in the American version the revelations are push so far beyond the boundaries that one can’t help but laugh as it dives head first into a comedy. It’s like Mark Protosevich simply did not understand it.

The film is like a circus freakshow. It begs to be gawked at. It calls for your attention with its vapid displays of shocking moments and CGI arterial spurts. It takes, truly heart wrenching moments and turns them into carnival amusment, defeating the entire point of the manga and the 2003 film.

In the end, you can see that the effort and desire was there. I truly believe that everyone involved thought they were making a good film. It is too bad that they decided to focus on how to make it cooler than the original instead of making something with soul. I guess Spike Lee just really needed a cash influx.

Only for those with morbid curiosity about how badly an Oldboy remake could be.